To determine whether a downward variance was appropriate in child pornography cases, the court will apply the approach proposed by the United States Sentencing Commission in Chapter 12(C) of its 2012 Child Pornography Report to “differentiate between offenders based on the content of the pornography at issue.”

The conditions of probation prohibited Defendant from possessing sexually explicit material – including child pornography, accessing the internet or electronic devices without permission, using nonapproved social media or chat websites, and consuming alcohol or drugs. A standard condition of probation for child pornography-related crimes required Defendant to “submit at any time to an unannounced visit and/or search of the offender’s person, vehicle or premises by the agent/designee.”

Expert testimony can play an important part in child pornography cases. In this case, the defendant contends that the prosecution’s expert lacked the qualifications necessary to provide an expert opinion as to identity-based upon the comparison of finger and knuckle creases as shown in the two sets of photos. The defendant claims that the government’s expert instead used a generic method unreliable for the comparison of finger and knuckle creases.